In a recent survey*, nearly three-quarters of manufacturers said that visibility throughout the manufacturing process was a key reason to buy a collaborative production management (CPM) system. Visibility was the most important benefit these companies were looking for in their manufacturing and across the whole enterprise.

But what exactly do they mean by visibility?

Before I answer that, it is worth noting that the manufacturers consulted in the survey were existing users of, or were planning to acquire, a production management software application. The questions put to these companies aimed to help them identify the functionality they were looking for from their existing or future production management systems.

One aspect of visibility that was identified is real-time decision support, so any software bought to improve visibility would have to provide this. Similarly, the ideal system should produce aggregate data from ERP, CPM, or automation systems. And finally, true visibility in manufacturing would require a system that ensured access to information (from other systems) that would never be more than 10 minutes old.

We can ascertain from this that visibility for these companies simply means being able to see what is going on, either on the shopfloor or in the stockroom, and that this visibility has to be in real time for it to be worth anything. Users of manufacturing systems have learnt - often the hard way - that they have to have bang up-to-date knowledge of inventory and work-in-progress (WIP) levels, while at the same time knowing which customer orders are 'live'.

Clearly, since cost efficiency is paramount, every manufacturing company should be looking to improve its management of WIP, especially if there is a large number of processes involved. Real time information from a CPM system would not only allow the company to reduce its stock levels but would also enable it to manage smaller lot sizes effectively.

Real facts, real time, instant results 

Mark Information UK, is one of Europe's leading suppliers of systems for data collection, job and roster planning, project registration, time & attendance and access control.

Essentially, the company's expertise focuses on two main areas: data collection and operational planning in companies' mission-critical processes; data collection of employee time. And it knows all about mission-critical processes - from the shopfloor to the boardroom. The company's time spent perfecting real time data collection ensures manufacturers have an effective way of optimising their performance.

The survey highlighted several key objectives that manufacturing companies should strive to achieve. They included:

- incorporating visibility into new ERP, CPM and automation systems and upgrades
- designing systems with data transfer and information display of 10 minutes or below
- getting data directly from the source application, not replicated in an intermediate database.

It is vital that companies can react at lightning speed to changes in demand or capacity - a sudden major order or an unexpected machinery or vehicle breakdown can have disastrous consequences if they can't adapt immediately. The ProMark solution from Mark Information makes this - and more - possible for companies that need to monitor, adjust and optimise mission-critical business processes constantly and in real time. For companies that already have ERP systems, ProMark can offer them capabilities of data handling that would otherwise simply not be available. The only way to achieve true visibility in manufacturing and to have a firm control over costs is to have all the relevant information instantly available.

Now we know what manufacturers mean by visibility and now they know how it can be delivered. Now we can all see.

* What do Visibility and Quality mean?, Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group 2006.